Unitec

budgeting, disclosure management

“CCH Tagetik’s solution has enabled us to model multiple iterations and scenarios of our annual budget which was previously not possible. This will be key in helping us successfully change our business and perform at the top level in our industry.”

Dr. Rick Ede - CEO, Unitec

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the challenge

Unitec, New Zealand’s largest technology institute, was grappling with a complex annual budgeting process. Funding for the institute’s 20,000 students comes from a wide array of sources. The institute has more than 100 departments, each of which has a different budget. Unitec also operates three campuses.

Yet until 2014, Unitec was managing annual budgeting with a complex system of Excel spreadsheets. Unitec’s five-member decision support team, responsible for the annual budget, typically spent three months to consolidate the 100+ spreadsheets involved in the process. The amount of manual work required increased the risk for errors and a lack of standardisation resulted in data inconsistencies. Changes were a nightmare to manage because they had to be manually made in all linked spreadsheets. So, when Unitec began a $250M business transformation programme, senior executives recognized that Excel-based budgeting could not provide the business modelling required for planning upcoming organizational changes or manage the upcoming initiatives.

Benefits

Manual processing time reduced from 95% to 5%

Changes can be modelled and scenarios understood without the need for any manual processing

Transparency of staff costing

Greater transparency over staff costing, more insight into profitability and new level of budgeting granularity

Reports available in minutes rather than weeks

Now consolidated budget reports are available instantly after drivers and expenses have been entered

Confidence in data

Senior executives have greater confidence in data and have quality information on which to base decisions

the solution

The CCH Tagetik solution has enabled Unitec to plan for its future success. Driver-based calculations are configured only once and then applied to every course, programme, and department across every budget month. Under the old system, this would have required tens of thousands of Excel formulae. Now consolidated budget reports are available instantly after drivers and expenses have been entered. Changes can be modelled and scenarios understood without the need for any manual processing. Senior executives have greater confidence in data and have quality information on which to base decisions.

Given the successful completion of the budgeting and planning project, Unitec is now expanding the use of CCH Tagetik for its annual reporting process.

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